And a good morning to you….

The week produced plenty of serious news about Salem, but one of our most popular stories in recent days involved pajamas.

If you missed it, this will help keep that holiday cheer going.

As reporter Abbey McDonald shares, a local hardware store pulled off an amazing feat with its customers. The winners? Area foster children.

We also made it easier to shop locally this season. Salem Reporter invited local businesses to send us one item they had that would make a good gift. The Salem Area Chamber of Commerce and the Salem Main Street Association helped spread the word.

The result is an eclectic gift guide ­­– all in Salem. Take a cruise through the listings.

On a more serious note, reaction has been strong to word the city of Salem planned sharp cutbacks in library services. Several readers noted that cutting Sunday hours would hurt working parents who can only get their kids to the library on weekends.

Meantime, the Salem City Council is pressing ahead to set up a new task force. The group is going to be put to work finding ways to raise money for the city. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this and will report to who gets appointed.

In other government budget news, Salem-Keizer School District officials rolled out another chapter in what you could call Budget Cuts 2024. The latest in a series of announcements this time focuses on cutting employees, including school nurses, as Managing Editor Rachel Alexander reports.

Our team also is reporting steadily on gun violence and its impact on Salem. We’ll be hosting a Town Hall on the topic in January, and details will be coming soon. But reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian has a reminder of what the community faces in his account of teens being arrested for local armed robberies.

In the slice-of-Salem-life category for you, we reported about firefighters who in fact call the fire station home. And then there’s Eli, a very special dog caring for children in a unique setting, as freelance writer Jean Dion reported.

Salem Reporter is pleased to provide several columnists who bring their expertise to their writing for you.

One is Pamela Ferrara, a part-time research associate with the Willamette Workforce Partnership. She writes regularly for you on the local economy and her latest explains the ins and outs of rising food costs.

Readers also regularly see stories from the Oregon Capital Chronicle. What is that?

This nonprofit news organization, which happens to share office space with Salem Reporter, is focused on reporting on Oregon state government and politics. They don’t charge for their work and they don’t sell ads. They are supported entirely by donors.

The team is led by Lynne Terry, a veteran Oregon journalist who serves as editor in chief. Her reporting squad is a deep bench with Julia Shumway, Alex Baumhardt and Ben Botkin.

We rely on them to cover important state stories so we can stay focused on our bread-and-butter, covering Salem.

In recent days, we carried Capital Chronicle stories about the deep impact of costly child care, the state’s move to get naloxone into schools, and a profile of Edwin Peterson, long-time judge well known in Salem who died recently.

This is all intended to provide you trusted news that’s matters.

To deliver this work, we depend almost entirely on local funding, most of it from subscribers, to gather and report these kinds of stories important to Salem. Our reporting aims to be fair and accurate, independent and free of opinion.

YOU CAN HELP.

SUBSCRIBE: If you aren’t yet a subscriber, become one today. That gives you full access to all the news on our website.  You also get our popular morning and evening newsletters, delivered to your email during the week. The cost is $10 a month, $100 for the year. Sign up HERE.

ONE-TIME CONTRIBUTION: If you subscribe already and still want to help, you can make a one-time contribution. Any amount for our News Fund is valued. You can do that quickly and easily HERE.

GIVE A GIFT OF SALEM REPORTER: And since it’s the holiday season, consider giving a GIFT SUBSCRIPTION. This is easy, can be done online in just moments, and allows you to deliver a gift message. You give someone a year’s worth of local news – and help Salem Reporter thrive.

As always, thank you for reading and feel free to reach out to me anytime at [email protected] with ideas, questions or concerns.

–Les Zaitz, CEO and editor